1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to the field of processing presentation data, and in particular, to repositioning processing of a presentation data stream starting from user defined boundaries.
2. Statement of the Problem
Presentation data streams are used as input for presentation devices. One application of presentation data streams is printing, and in particular, production printing. For a number of reasons, it may be useful to pause printing of presentation data and to later resume the presentation at a different point in the presentation data. For example, in the context of production printing and mass printing, printing or post-print processing errors are common. During the printing of a print job (e.g., a presentation data stream), one or more printed pages may be damaged or otherwise rendered defective. Post processing equipment attached to a continuous form printer, such as cutters, inserters, sorters or stackers may damage printed pages. The continuous form printer may print one or more pages lighter than desired. As a consequence, operators may need to reprint defective pages that encountered errors somewhere in the workflow. Thus the printing of the presentation may be paused, the problem corrected, and the printing of the presentation data resumes at a specified point such as at the last properly printed sheet. The presentation data stream is said to be “repositioned” at the new resumption point. Repositioning may also be used for alternative presentments, such as e-mail, web-pages, hand-held devices, and other customer communications.
Since many of these errors occur during post processing, the printer is not likely to automatically detect the error and re-print the defective pages (like in a paper jam situation). Thus, the operator may need to reposition processing of the data stream and re-print the defective pages on the printer, ideally without producing the wrong pages and with minimum scrap.
In other scenarios, it may be necessary to reposition processing of the data stream to re-prioritize the printing of documents in the data stream. For example, a higher priority may be assigned to one portion of the presentation data as compared to another portion. A particular group of customer invoices, for example, may be deemed more important to print at this time than another group in the same presentation data file. In such a scenario, the printing of the presentation data may be paused by an operator, the printing system repositioned to a different point in the presentation data stream, and printing resumed at that new point in the presentation data stream.
To reposition within the printer data stream as presently practiced, an operator must reposition to the general point from which to resume (e.g., forward space 1000 pages), and then manually adjust the reposition from that point to start printing from the precise page (e.g., a mail-piece) that the operator desires.
Mass mailing is one particular application where data stream repositioning is particularly useful. In mass mailing, a data stream comprising a plurality of mail-pieces is processed by a printing system. A mail piece may comprise a plurality of documents for a recipient (e.g., a customer), such as a customer invoice, targeted advertising, customer notifications (e.g., privacy policies), etc. All of the documents comprise a mail-piece within the data stream, and once printed, the mail-piece may then be processed by post processing equipment, such as cutters, staplers and inserters to cut and staple the pages and insert the mail-piece documents into envelopes for mailing. One of ordinary skill in the art will recognize the applicability to equivalent problems with doing e-presentment of customer transactional data, in lieu of mass mailings.
In a data stream comprising multiple documents (e.g., customer invoices), the current, largely manual, repositioning process at the page-level may cause partial printing of documents. In other words, an operator may improperly reposition the data stream to resume printing at an incorrect page. This error may result in a partial document or partial mail piece being generated. Worse yet, the erroneous partial document may end up in another customer's envelope when the sheets are processed by inserters and the like. Such an error is not only unprofessional, but opens up the printing operator or business to possible liability for divulging customer confidential information (e.g., personal medical or financial information of a customer). For example, if Joe Smith's invoice is destroyed during the cutting process, the operator may desire to reprint Joe Smith's invoice. The operator may try to reposition the data stream to the first page of Joe Smith's invoice. However, the operator may inadvertently reposition the data stream to the last page of John Doe's invoice, which immediately precedes Joe Smith's invoice in the data stream. Thus, Joe Smith will receive the last page of John Doe's invoice.
It is possible within the art to produce system controls which can detect such a partial mail-piece condition, and disallow the actual mailing of the erroneous mail piece, as well as create a reprint for an individual mail piece. Such systems are most generally referred to as an Automated Document System or Automated Document Factory (ADF), and include IBM's Infoprint® Workflow and Infoprint® Process Director products. However, this invention advances the art over ADF functionality. First, such system controls may be most cost effective only for large mailing environments, and are far from ubiquitous in the mailing and e-presentment industries. By contrast, repositioning of a print job is an inherent print system capability, built into spooling systems as old as JES on z/OS, as currently evidenced by the ability to move forward and back, or print part of a file, on most modern print and presentation systems. Second, because the ADF is built atop the inherent capabilities, while it can detect a bad mail piece, it cannot prevent it. Because the inherent capabilities of the system allow page-level-reprinting to occur via printer or system commands, scrap costs and other operational headaches can still occur even with an ADF due to human error. ADFs can preclude such erroneous mailings from going out the door, but the present invention addresses and improves the inherent repositioning functionality to improve results in both ADF and non-ADF presentation environments.
Unfortunately, present printing systems and management applications do not allow an operator to reposition a data stream at positions other than page-level boundaries. For example, even in highly controlled ADF environments where piece level reprinting is possible, page-level repositioning is still built into printer and spooling system controls, and is in wide use to correct common quality issues such as making adjustments to the “look” of the printing via backing up and trying (n) pages again after making changes to the printer, paper, etc. Thus, an operator choosing an inappropriate restart position after a reposition within the data stream remains a problem. This creates a risk of printing partial-mail pieces and other partial document printing.